19 runners turned up at Big Moose ready to run and collect some more good deeds by doing good in the community!

There would be no other way to start this write up than to say a huge thank you to our friends at Big Moose. It is not often we are up the creek without a paddle, however two weeks ago we found out that Yr Hen Llyfrgell could no longer be our meeting point for our runs and this left us without a place to meet each week. Big Moose have kindly allowed us to use the café indefinitely, so we can keep doing good in the community (which is exactly what their mission is too) – if you are reading this with a tea, coffee, beer, glass of pinot grigio or maybe something as exciting as a glass of water, then raise it in the air for these guys now. And next time you are in town, pop in there for a coffee! Click here to find out more about Big Moose

At 6.30pm it was time to get stuck into our warm up. We all jogged on the spot whilst Ben told everyone about GoodGym – who knew that so much positive difference can be made in the world with running?! Ben then started off a headcount and as an icebreaker he announced what his favourite type of cake was (FYI, his favourite cake is carrot or coffee). Everyone else shared their favourite cake flavours too… Lemon drizzle, Walnut, Red Velvet were amongst the flavours that got mentioned, YUM! With cake on runners’ minds some people struggled with the headcount – oh dear oh dear. A HUGE welcome to the 4 new runners joining in the GoodGym run for their first time; Katie, Rachel, Harvey and Emma (Well done for coming along guys, you did awesome during tonight’s run!).

Salivating with all the talk of cake, it was time to head off on our run. Tonight we were running to clear pebbles from St Davids 2, load them into a van and then empty them at St Mary’s Church on Bute Street. The stones would then be used to create a habitat for wildlife at the church. Steve, who was our task organiser for the evening, met us at Big Moose and to everyone’s surprise started leading the run at an incredible pace, especially given that he was wearing boots with steel toecaps, full length work trousers and a smart white shirt – He must have a superman costume underneath!

After approximately 0.4 miles we arrived at one of the back entrances to St David’s 2. This was a no running zone and so we power walked the rest of the way to the task.

When we arrived at the task Steve explained what he needed us all to do. He set some runners the challenge of bagging up all of the rocks on the floor into white bags and instructed another team of runners to escort him to the roof where there were more pebbles that needed putting into bags. After an intense 10 minutes the pebbles on the roof were bagged and the pebbles on the floor were also bagged. “Great going guys” Steve said, impressed with our efforts so far. Steve then said, “that was challenge 1, now it’s time for challenge 2”. Challenge 2 was to load up all of the white bags of rocks into the van. After about 15 bags of pebbles were loaded and we all thought the van couldn’t take anymore weight, Steve proved us wrong by going up to the roof, dropping more bags of pebbles down the chute and asked runners to load the rest of the pebbles into the van – Steve was definitely a man with a van with a plan!

Some task antics!

• Fiona had the urge to slide down the chute
• Darren and Nathan were both amazed at the roundness of the pebbles
• Harvey made lifting the bags filled with pebbles look easy
• Amy and Keira managed to fill a bag full of pebbles each within 10 minutes!
• Ffion was running with her new running watch
• Nathan was getting stuck in on a Tuesday evening run now the youth club he leads has taken a break for the summer

Anymore antics i've missed? Comment them below!

Challenge 3 was still to come…

The task was not over yet. Steve set off in the van to St Mary’s Church on Bute street and the plan was for us all to meet him there. We ran through town and after about 10 minutes of running we arrived at the Church. We unloaded the van of all the rocks and we all breathed sighs of relief… the van was okay! We were proud with our efforts and with the knowledge that all of the pebbles we moved are going to be used to create a habitat for wildlife on the church grounds.

”Thank you for all of your help, you’ve really made a big difference and if the RSPB need anymore pebbles, we’d love for you to help out again, if you’d like to!”

We all waved Steve goodbye and thanked him for such an awesome task.

It was still only 7.30pm so that meant there was time for some FITNESS FUN!

All of the runners were excited about what was to come for the second half of the session and Ben had a treat in store for them. Ben led the runners from Bute street onto Lloyd George Avenue and informed everyone that there was time for some sprints! Everyone’s face lit up (Or just Adam’s face; he is a big lover of sprints). Ben then instructed everyone to do 50 metre sprints followed by a slow paced recovery jog and to see how many they could do in 10 minutes.

A round of applause! Everyone embraced the sprints and definitely had a good work out!

It was now time to run back to BIG MOOSE COFFEE CO! We took the Smart Way back – we genuinely did, check out the photos. Big Moose had really kindly made us some of the most scrumptious cakes in the world for us to have after our run (Maybe that’s why the run back was slightly quicker eyy?).

When we arrived at Big Moose we did our warm down, collected out belongings and the headed over to the Glassworks for………. Yes, you guessed it! Drinkypoos!!!

Don’t forget to sign up to next weeks run! CLICK HERE to get signed up! Do it now, don’t wait another minute :P